My heart was broken after watching this full of sad, gloomy, and tragedy movie, and it takes me a long time to recovery.
This movie reveals the hidden history of the early Canada. According to IMDb (1990-2015), More than 100,000 aboriginal children in Canada were forced to attend the church-run residential schools for over 130 years, and until 1996, the Canadian government abolished this cruel regulation and apologized publicly for had having this long period shameful history. Through this movie, people not only can see how fearful and conflicted the children are, but also can see the inhumanity and cold-blooded of some priests and sisters at that time. The church should be the place where gives people peace, flushes people’s soul, and washes away the dust. People always do confession and pray in the church because they want to become the better ones that are full of mercy and tolerant. However, in this movie, the priests and the sisters are not merciful at all. They treat children like animals. They always punish them by spanking, even kneeling down with asking them to hold their tongues for a long time just because children are refusable to speak English. At that age, church was governed by Canadian government, so the priests and the sisters had the power to do anything, and everyone in the residential school should listen to them. The nurse in the residential school is evil as well to children, when Lyna told what she saw last night to the nurse, the nurse pretended she knew nothing, and even slapping Lyna for she did not eat anything. What is more, even the relatives of the children do believe that sending children to residential school is a wise choice because children need to gain knowledge, and being in that place is really helpful for them. When children talk about the food and their miserable situation in school, nobody believes what they say. It can be seen that the governed-run church has the huge power dominating the education of the aboriginal children in those years in Canada.
Moreover, in terms of the mental health of the young children, sending young children to residential school and trying to use all ways to remove their own culture is an absolutely a harmful behavior. On the one hand, children should not be separated with their parents, for they need to be cared carefully to make possibility to build children a good character in the future. What children need is not only the basic demanding like food, they also need warm, attention, and love from homes. The government has the right to make children go to school, but it does not have the right depriving their happiness with family. On the other hand, there exists bias, racial discrimination, sexual abuse, and all the cruel things in the church. It is not supposed to happen, but children suffer a lot from it and which leaves them a bad memory. When Lyna and Glen are recalling their story, we can see there still is a lingering shadow in their the most inner hearts.
This is a film that makes people having many kinds of complicated emotions, like, anger, resentment, sadness, etc. The whole movie tone is dark and gloomy. The director tries to restore the true story by making Lyna and Glen tell their story in flashback and make audience more touchy. Lyna and Glen use many negative words to express their feeling in the movie, like, pain and anger. Those lines are combined with the deep dark music, heightening an atmosphere that makes audience can feel what Lyna and Glen feel. Also, people can see a lot of scenes related to the horse, that is a metaphor, representing home somehow. Once something has been recalled of pain by Lyna and Glen, the horse comes out. Horses are totally free, they eat grass on the grassland, they close to the nature and very carefree, and it is what Lyna and Glen are dreaming of. However, they can not neither back home nor be with their family, it is a feeling that just like been imprisoned, and they suffer a lot, so many children kill themselves after being released from schools. However, at the end of the film, the old Glen says, the anger is gone. Although sadness still exists, they hope their story can be known and believed by more people, and the tragedy will not happen again.
The movie was ended with the apology by Stephen Harper, the president of Canada. He admitted this shameful history in back years, and regretted for it. All the residential schools were closed in 1996, Lyna and Glen did not give up their lives. Lyna works for the aboriginal children to protect them and to defend for them. Both Glen and Lyna know that, only by getting peace of mind for better living, can they get one more chance freedom.
References
IMDb. (1990-2015) . We were children. Plot summary.
Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1934472/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
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